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I've seen posts recently that speak about Nintendo, notably their consoles, why some seem inventive and some just ... do not. Why is that? Is the notion just 'playing it safe'? True, but with very heavy usages of quotation marks. If we peel back the layers gently, one by one, we can uncover the true history behind Nintendo's ideas and evolution into what they are today.
One man is taking the spotlight today. The progenitor of invention. The man who put a true spin into everything ever related to videogames. That man is Gunpei Yokoi.
Yokoi started his tenure at Nintendo back when they still manufactured cards, but the reality of it is all he was hired on for was to meet a new law that every company big enough needed a hired electrical engineer on site. Yokoi was employed just to fit this need. Yokoi was embarrassed to meet his former friends who took jobs at the great and big electrical companies of the time. He depressingly kept his head low, and drooped to the idea that he'd just menially toil away at this for 40 or odd years until he hit retirement. But there really was almost nothing for him to do there. Fix a glue machine here and there, his downtime was relieved by tinkering with company tools to perfect things like his harpoon making.
This was the beginning of something beautiful.
Yokoi refined a toy that he had made when he was young. Something like a hand that extends to reach things. This was the boon of everything. This singlehandedly transformed Nintendo from a almost bankrupt simple card making manufacturer into something that created games. Hiroshi Yamauchi, the current president of Nintendo caught him playing with it in company time. Was he fired? Nope. Yamauchi told him to "sell it - not as a toy. But as a game instead."
It would be impossible for Nintendo to step into the toy buisness. But Yamauchi's critical eye saw an opening into the world of games, as tender and innocent as that word was at the time.
This birthed Nintendo's development division. Yamauchi told the man to pump out hits after hits. This stressed him out to no end but ... he did actually do it.
This was the genesis of Yokoi's creative and inventive abilities of utilizing old, weathered technology and refining it into gold like the title of this post.
New technology was terrifying at the time, and still is I'd argue. it hasn't been tested by millions of customers. It could break down, experience a multitude of glitches before a understanding could be reached.
One of Yokoi's inventions was a wonder. You've seen the poster-boy of this invention on Smash Bros.
That's right, the Game & Watch. A ingenious birth of old, reliable tech that is familiar and reliable. Yokoi's sighting of a businessman on a train fiddling with buttons on a calculator as we all did as kids was an eureka in the brain of one.
A digital clock, and a segmented, liquid crystal display was the pathway into electronic games.
After striking our molten Earth with a whipping ZING of creativity and invention, where else but further above in the clouds? What came next?
Yokoi had miraculously done it again after a long career of thinking up many other Game & Watch games, we now wanted to go further into the world of childlike wonder with the birth of the Game Boy, yet another imaginative, incredible invention at the time.
And again, rather then constantly hounding and chasing the colourful displays and faster processors of the other competitors at the time, Yokoi focused on what he knew most and with his critical eye, ensured the Boy would have incredible durability, affordability and battery life due to the use of cost-effective and mature technology that was seen during the time.
However, this marks the conclusion of Yokoi's tenure with Nintendo. After many programming faults, mishaps, hardships and pressure from everything of his newest idea: The Virtual Boy. This system released with about only 40% of Yokoi's vision inside it. It's ideas were beaten down and decomposed into a shell of it's grandiose appeal. You could originally have worn the Virtual Boy like it was a pair of goggles. But the ongoing issues of motion sickness, the prevalent "lazy-eye" disorder becoming prevalent in children at the time, these motion-tracking goggles and other ideas were struck down by the thunder of the Product Liability Act of 1995. The Virtual Boy was released unfinished and thrown into the den of wolves.
"We experimented with a color LCD screen, but the users did not see depth, they just saw double. Color graphics give people the impression that a game is high tech. But just because a game has a beautiful display does not mean that the game is fun to play. ... Red uses less battery and red is easier to recognize. That is why red is used for traffic lights." - Gunpei Yokoi
Following Nintendo's heartless and cold-blooded pursuit into the world of pushing for upgraded models of their systems like the Game Boy Pocket and the Nintendo 64, which was being developed as just a solemn console made for the intent of competing and not ingenuity. Yokoi frustratingly left the company, displeased with what the company was becoming. This was no longer the beautiful home of his tinkering. Yokoi had often spent free days from work just to be excited to work more at Nintendo's Research & Development for magical ideas.
This explains Nintendo's era from the Gameboy Pocket, the Nintendo 64, all the way to the Nintendo Gamecube. Nintendo was ran on the idea of "playing it safe" Chasing competition with power for the time. This of course would not be the last time we see Nintendo acting this way. But competitors like Sony left them in the dirt during this era.
Yokoi's tale has one more swan song to deliver, which is the titular Wonderswan, a rather obscure handheld as the world would have you believe it these days. The Wonderswan was Yokoi's very last gift to the world, and a detachment of employees at Nintendo who resigned alongside Yokoi to create a new company to focus on developing creative things out of familiar and old tech. With a truly wonderful looking system that you could flip on all sides to play all kinds of games, the Wonderswan still unfortunately failed. It was frankly too good to be true of a system. People saw it's price on store shelves and questioned its dubious price. "Why is it so affordable compared to the GameBoy Advance? I don't know these games, I'd rather play the ones I know."
Yamauchi never dared to let Yokoi's system see a innocent life on store shelves. He constantly pushed for the GameBoy to evolve to almost spite Yokoi's influence on the company. He pushed for the GameBoy Advance. He garnered lower production costs for the Advance just for the excuse to make it cheaper and affordable in comparison to the late Yokoi's wonderchild. This was a cruel turn of events, and the true colours of business.
I mentioned "the late Yokoi" in my last paragraph, and this is unfortunately a sad turn of events. Before the Wonderswan's release to the public, Yokoi was unfortunately caught in a car accident in October of 1997. As I progressively learned Nintendo's history, learning of Yokoi's departure of the world was quite frankly shattering. I only wish I could visit his gravestone in Japan to pay my utmost respects to him. This incredible man who paved the way with all the things we were raised on, grew up with. He is the face behind the magic. And I will never forget him, even if people move on today without a care in the world of what happened with Nintendo.
Rest in peace, Gunpei Yokoi. I will always be thankful and loving of what you left the world with. I don't think we ever deserved a man like you.
I want to thank everyone who read this gigantic post of mine. If it helped you at all create awareness of Yokoi's influence on the world of videogames as we know it today, that's all I need to create a smile on my face.
Yokoi had a star pupil in history known as Satoru Iwata who greatly respected Yokoi's life at Nintendo and his sideways thinking of modern technology. But I can make a terribly long post on that wonderful man alone, so I will have to leave it to another day as I am now thoroughly out of batteries after writing this thread alone. See you next time on a "practical article" on the life of Satoru Iwata: The Last Hope of Nintendo.
One man is taking the spotlight today. The progenitor of invention. The man who put a true spin into everything ever related to videogames. That man is Gunpei Yokoi.
Yokoi started his tenure at Nintendo back when they still manufactured cards, but the reality of it is all he was hired on for was to meet a new law that every company big enough needed a hired electrical engineer on site. Yokoi was employed just to fit this need. Yokoi was embarrassed to meet his former friends who took jobs at the great and big electrical companies of the time. He depressingly kept his head low, and drooped to the idea that he'd just menially toil away at this for 40 or odd years until he hit retirement. But there really was almost nothing for him to do there. Fix a glue machine here and there, his downtime was relieved by tinkering with company tools to perfect things like his harpoon making.
This was the beginning of something beautiful.
Yokoi refined a toy that he had made when he was young. Something like a hand that extends to reach things. This was the boon of everything. This singlehandedly transformed Nintendo from a almost bankrupt simple card making manufacturer into something that created games. Hiroshi Yamauchi, the current president of Nintendo caught him playing with it in company time. Was he fired? Nope. Yamauchi told him to "sell it - not as a toy. But as a game instead."
It would be impossible for Nintendo to step into the toy buisness. But Yamauchi's critical eye saw an opening into the world of games, as tender and innocent as that word was at the time.
"I realise now. This was the beginning of my life." - Gunpei Yokoi, on creating the Ultra Hand
This birthed Nintendo's development division. Yamauchi told the man to pump out hits after hits. This stressed him out to no end but ... he did actually do it.
This was the genesis of Yokoi's creative and inventive abilities of utilizing old, weathered technology and refining it into gold like the title of this post.
New technology was terrifying at the time, and still is I'd argue. it hasn't been tested by millions of customers. It could break down, experience a multitude of glitches before a understanding could be reached.
One of Yokoi's inventions was a wonder. You've seen the poster-boy of this invention on Smash Bros.
That's right, the Game & Watch. A ingenious birth of old, reliable tech that is familiar and reliable. Yokoi's sighting of a businessman on a train fiddling with buttons on a calculator as we all did as kids was an eureka in the brain of one.
"Dream Architect" - Pikmin 2's title of the very first Game Boy "Ball"
Many of Yokoi's inventions were referenced and included in Pikmin 2 as a way of symbolizing the man's efforts. Including the Love Tester.
Many of Yokoi's inventions were referenced and included in Pikmin 2 as a way of symbolizing the man's efforts. Including the Love Tester.
A digital clock, and a segmented, liquid crystal display was the pathway into electronic games.
After striking our molten Earth with a whipping ZING of creativity and invention, where else but further above in the clouds? What came next?
Yokoi had miraculously done it again after a long career of thinking up many other Game & Watch games, we now wanted to go further into the world of childlike wonder with the birth of the Game Boy, yet another imaginative, incredible invention at the time.
And again, rather then constantly hounding and chasing the colourful displays and faster processors of the other competitors at the time, Yokoi focused on what he knew most and with his critical eye, ensured the Boy would have incredible durability, affordability and battery life due to the use of cost-effective and mature technology that was seen during the time.
The wunderkind of the fourth generation of videogames, the Game Boy.
However, this marks the conclusion of Yokoi's tenure with Nintendo. After many programming faults, mishaps, hardships and pressure from everything of his newest idea: The Virtual Boy. This system released with about only 40% of Yokoi's vision inside it. It's ideas were beaten down and decomposed into a shell of it's grandiose appeal. You could originally have worn the Virtual Boy like it was a pair of goggles. But the ongoing issues of motion sickness, the prevalent "lazy-eye" disorder becoming prevalent in children at the time, these motion-tracking goggles and other ideas were struck down by the thunder of the Product Liability Act of 1995. The Virtual Boy was released unfinished and thrown into the den of wolves.
"We experimented with a color LCD screen, but the users did not see depth, they just saw double. Color graphics give people the impression that a game is high tech. But just because a game has a beautiful display does not mean that the game is fun to play. ... Red uses less battery and red is easier to recognize. That is why red is used for traffic lights." - Gunpei Yokoi
Following Nintendo's heartless and cold-blooded pursuit into the world of pushing for upgraded models of their systems like the Game Boy Pocket and the Nintendo 64, which was being developed as just a solemn console made for the intent of competing and not ingenuity. Yokoi frustratingly left the company, displeased with what the company was becoming. This was no longer the beautiful home of his tinkering. Yokoi had often spent free days from work just to be excited to work more at Nintendo's Research & Development for magical ideas.
This explains Nintendo's era from the Gameboy Pocket, the Nintendo 64, all the way to the Nintendo Gamecube. Nintendo was ran on the idea of "playing it safe" Chasing competition with power for the time. This of course would not be the last time we see Nintendo acting this way. But competitors like Sony left them in the dirt during this era.
Yokoi's tale has one more swan song to deliver, which is the titular Wonderswan, a rather obscure handheld as the world would have you believe it these days. The Wonderswan was Yokoi's very last gift to the world, and a detachment of employees at Nintendo who resigned alongside Yokoi to create a new company to focus on developing creative things out of familiar and old tech. With a truly wonderful looking system that you could flip on all sides to play all kinds of games, the Wonderswan still unfortunately failed. It was frankly too good to be true of a system. People saw it's price on store shelves and questioned its dubious price. "Why is it so affordable compared to the GameBoy Advance? I don't know these games, I'd rather play the ones I know."
Yamauchi never dared to let Yokoi's system see a innocent life on store shelves. He constantly pushed for the GameBoy to evolve to almost spite Yokoi's influence on the company. He pushed for the GameBoy Advance. He garnered lower production costs for the Advance just for the excuse to make it cheaper and affordable in comparison to the late Yokoi's wonderchild. This was a cruel turn of events, and the true colours of business.
I mentioned "the late Yokoi" in my last paragraph, and this is unfortunately a sad turn of events. Before the Wonderswan's release to the public, Yokoi was unfortunately caught in a car accident in October of 1997. As I progressively learned Nintendo's history, learning of Yokoi's departure of the world was quite frankly shattering. I only wish I could visit his gravestone in Japan to pay my utmost respects to him. This incredible man who paved the way with all the things we were raised on, grew up with. He is the face behind the magic. And I will never forget him, even if people move on today without a care in the world of what happened with Nintendo.
Rest in peace, Gunpei Yokoi. I will always be thankful and loving of what you left the world with. I don't think we ever deserved a man like you.
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I want to thank everyone who read this gigantic post of mine. If it helped you at all create awareness of Yokoi's influence on the world of videogames as we know it today, that's all I need to create a smile on my face.
Yokoi had a star pupil in history known as Satoru Iwata who greatly respected Yokoi's life at Nintendo and his sideways thinking of modern technology. But I can make a terribly long post on that wonderful man alone, so I will have to leave it to another day as I am now thoroughly out of batteries after writing this thread alone. See you next time on a "practical article" on the life of Satoru Iwata: The Last Hope of Nintendo.
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